


Sunflare and Starfire

by thedevilchicken



Category: Original Work
Genre: Armor, Getting Together, Historical Fantasy, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:09:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26940421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Simon, eldest son of Count Trewinter, probably shouldn't spend so much time in a place like Eastgate End. But Aeson the rather brusque armoursmith has caught his attention, and he can't seem to let that go.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character, Very Attractive Knight/Gruff Armourer Forging His New Armour
Comments: 6
Kudos: 88
Collections: Canon Ball 2020





	Sunflare and Starfire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Writer_of_Words88](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writer_of_Words88/gifts).



The armour fits perfectly. 

It really ought to, Simon thinks: he's attended numerous fittings over the past month or so, at the far side of the city from where families like his own live, in the armoursmith's workshop. It's in a part of town his father wishes he wouldn't frequent, though they both know his most ignominious fights have all taken place in that general vicinity. He broke his showy sunflare-etched dagger there, in an ill-advised knife fight over something true - though not exactly chivalrous - that his friend had said about the fletcher's daughter. He broke two fingers throwing a punch when the butcher - deep in his cups at the time - took exception to his companion's raucous laughter when he tripped and spilled his ale. He's done a lot of things in Eastgate End that he really ought not to have done at all.

Last year, he broke his nose in a tavern brawl and had to suffer a local mage making the repairs to his face afterwards, because he really couldn't have returned to his father's house in the state he was in. The worst part of it was, he thinks, that he did it to himself - in the midst of it all, he slipped on spilled wine and hit his face against a nearby pillar and spent the rest of the fight bleeding down his tunic in a way that told a story of his evening that he didn't think was entirely inaccurate. His father had despaired of him years ago, years before that night, and it's hard to explain that it's not the case that he fights for the sake of fighting; it's just that he has a somewhat overzealous sense of honour, and he keeps company with men who don't.

He remembers that night, though, as he examines his armour in its maker's huge mirror. He remembers because the armoursmith had been there in the tavern that night, at a table in the corner, eating a bowl of stew washed down with beer - he knows it was stew because they've never sold much of anything else by way of food, no matter the season or the time of day. The smith had been there all night, alone, though it didn't seem very much like the locals were avoiding him; some of them greeted him quite warmly as they passed, and he nodded in response. It seemed he simply wasn't much for conversation, a fact to which Simon can now attest personally. 

After the fight, when the city guards were coming and Simon, bloody-faced and obviously guilty, had resigned himself to a night in their cells and his father's stern-faced disapproval in the morning, it was the taciturn smith who'd caught his arm and ushered him out the back door. He led him down an alleyway that smelled like stale beer over metal and fire, and into the workshop where he'd be out of the way. 

"Thank you," he remembers saying, once the door was closed behind them and the workshop's magework wards were back in place. He still had his head tilted back to try to stop his nose from bleeding but it didn't work; his tunic was ruined and he was dripping on the floor no matter how hard he tried not to. He tried to angle his body so he just dripped on his shoes, but that frankly just made matters worse. "You know, you didn't have to do that."

"No, I didn't," the smith replied, and that was the extent of that. He threw him a clean cloth, which Simon folded and applied to his face, then threw him a dirty one and pointed to the floor - Simon took the hint and laid it out so he could bleed on that instead of the brickwork. 

He watched the smith from across the room, as he went about it lighting a few small lamps. He'd been to the workshop before, just once, after he'd broken his sunflare dagger in that ill-advised fight over the fletcher's daughter; he remembered handing the two parts of the sad-looking weapon, then separate though they very much should not have been, to one of the smith's apprentices, and how that apprentice's eyes had gone wide when he'd looked at it. There aren't many sunflare-etched weapons still left in the world, and fewer smiths who can summon the magicks to perform that etching for themselves. Aeson of Eastgate, he'd found out that day, was one of the few that still remained, and consequently his work cost more than any smith in the entire city - even his work without sunflare. 

When the apprentice had quoted him the price for his dagger's repair, Simon's heart had sunk and he told the young man, rather transparently, that he'd have to think about it. The truth is, his family is old and his family is noble, and he doubts he'll ever go hungry in his life, but their coffers are far from overflowing. He's never had the dagger repaired. He just shut it up in a box under a floorboard in his room where his father couldn't find it and let him believe he'd lost it playing cards. As disapproving as he'd looked, Simon couldn't say he'd looked surprised.

That day, he'd seen Aeson working there at the back of the shop, tongs in one hand and hammer in the other. The room had been hot from the forge though the back doors were flung wide to keep the temperature bearable, and there'd been sweat on his brow and thick muscles working underneath the taut fabric of his roughspun shirt. He remembers the way his long black hair in its long braid swung against his back as he hammered, kept safely pinned behind him as it was by the neck strap of his worn leather apron. Then he'd watched as the ring of the hammering stopped and he set his tools aside. He'd watched him as he'd pricked his thumb and pressed a bloody thumbprint into the still-hot metal. When the light had shone on it afterwards, through the open doors, his maker's mark - his thumbprint - had stood out in glowing sunflare. 

He'd always heard that the talent for sunflare was as much in the smith's blood as it was in their magic; that day was when Simon had understood what that meant. Then Aeson had looked at him, sucking on his bloody thumb. Simon remembers exactly how warm his face had felt, along with various other parts of him, and he couldn't possibly have claimed that was just the heat of the armoursmith's forge. Later that day, that night, in bed, cock in hand, Aeson's sharp blue eyes and sweat-damp skin bright in his head, he certainly hadn't tried to fool himself that he was thinking of anything else. Now, here he was again. When Aeson finished lighting the lamps and looked at him again, his eyes still seemed just as sharp despite the lower light.

Simon Trewinter, son of Count Trewinter, is not a small man. That night, he was a little hunched as he stood there bleeding into his borrowed cloth, but at twenty-six years old he was tall and slim and leanly muscular, and what he was not entirely unaware that people referred to as handsome. He has shining blonde hair that won't stay out of his jewel-blue eyes, and most people seem to find that endearing. He smiles a lot, and most people find that endearing, too. He's a knight, former squire to the Duke of Vellingham, and notionally a cavalryman in the king's own regiment. He's stubborn and strong and a devil with a sword and he's always known his father hopes he'll marry into money and save their wretched noble house, and honestly he'd never been entirely convinced that that wouldn't happen in the end. But Aeson the smith didn't seem impressed with the bloody-faced man standing in his workshop, no matter the fact that he'd saved him from the city guard. Simon, son of a count, knight to the king, felt about as small as a dormouse in the palace ballroom and roughly twice as awkward. Behind his borrowed cloth, he felt his cheeks blush.

"You wouldn't happen to know a healing mage, would you?" he asked, to break the damn near intolerable silence.

"I would." The smith crossed his thick arms over his chest and raised his eyebrows at him pointedly. "A good one. Just don't expect it'll be painless. We're not all lords round here." 

Then he strode past him, avoiding the drops of blood on his floor. His arm brushed Simon's shoulder and he realised that Aeson was taller than him by at least a full head and far broader than him, too. He strode back out into the darkened street and left Simon there alone, contemplating most inappropriately just how strong he might be and for what he might personally find that strength useful. Mercifully not long after, he swept back in with a tired-looking, tousled-looking woman following behind him, evidently roused from bed. She had Simon sit down on a chair and grumbled underneath her breath as she took the cloth away from his face, not exactly carefully but with a very practiced air to her. A few minutes after that, Simon understood exactly what Aeson had meant about the mage: the best ones cure all injuries as good as new, and the worst ones mend what's wrong but maybe leave a deformation or a scar behind. This one healed him perfectly but the process hurt more than the injury itself, albeit briefly. Then again, he had to admit he'd had worse.

"You might have warned me," Simon said, as the mage made her grumbling exit. He was standing at the mirror, prodding at the bridge of his nose with still faintly bloody fingers, though his eyes were on Aeson there not so very far behind him.

"I did warn you, didn't I?" Aeson replied. He shrugged his huge shoulders. "If the job's not good enough, I can see about re-breaking it." 

Simon turned to him. He smoothed down his stained tunic. "I really don't think that's necessary," he said, as he tried very hard not to return to the thoughts he'd indulged in during Aeson's brief absence. Perhaps the man was somewhat rough and somewhat blunt, not born _too_ low but also several ranks from the nobility, and his big hands and thick forearms were scarred from his work in the forge, but all of that just seemed to add to Simon's undeniable attraction. Then Aeson handed something to him, a folded fabric thing - he shook it out of its neat folds and found it was a tunic. Nothing particularly fancy, but Simon had never exactly longed for gold thread and silk and when he pulled off his own bloodstained tunic to put the borrowed tunic on, he could have sworn that Aeson's gaze lingered on his bare, lamplit torso. He didn't think that he'd imagined it, or at the very least he hoped he hadn't.

"What do I owe you?" he asked, once he'd cinched the rather large tunic at his waist with his leather belt.

Aeson raised his brows. "Owe me?" he replied.

"For the mage. I'll return the tunic." 

Aeson shrugged. "She owed me a favour," he said.

"So now I owe you one?" Simon smiled. His heart pounded in his chest and he took a step closer. He tilted his head. He brushed his hair back from his eyes. "What kind of favour could I do for you?"

"Did I ask you for one?"

Simon shrugged. He stepped closer still. "That seemed to be implied," he said, and stepped closer again, so close he could feel the warmth of Aeson's rather massive frame even through his borrowed tunic. He had to look up to meet his gaze, but Aeson's gaze was definitely on him. He seemed almost a little younger close up, not forty years or more like he'd previously estimated but still somewhere in his thirties, with perhaps a week of unshaved black beard standing out against his neck jaw and cheeks and neck. Simon wondered what it might feel like under his fingertips. He wondered what it might feel like under his lips, or against his thighs. And perhaps he'd always known that people found him attractive, men and women alike, but he also knew he'd never been very much the easy coquette; his chest felt tight with nerves as he smiled with more confidence than he truly felt, and then he pressed one hand down firmly in between Aeson's thighs.

"Anything coming to mind?" he asked, and for a moment he thought it might be precisely what they both wanted. For a moment, it seemed like Aeson's cock might have twitched under his hand. For a moment, he thought his little daydream might become reality and he'd find himself stripped half-naked with his legs wrapped tight around the armoursmith's solid waist. He'd thought about that more than once since the first time they'd met, and he wondered if Aeson had thought about it, too, though he supposed they'd only seen each other briefly, across the workshop once, and across the bustling tavern rather more than that.

"How can I repay you?" Simon said, his voice low and thick with his obvious desire. And he believed that Aeson wanted it, too.

But then, Aeson sighed. "Not like that," he replied, grimacing, and he stepped back, almost stumbled back away from Simon's hand, and shook his head as he raked his callused fingers over his braided hair. "Just go," he said, and he gestured to the doors then turned away from him. And, when Simon understood in a rather disappointed flush that he actually meant it, he did exactly that; he left Aeson's workshop and he went back to his father's house. In bed, the lights out, under his sheets, still in his borrowed tunic, he clenched his jaw and stroked himself until he came so hard he strained multiple muscles. And he still had no idea why Aeson had saved him from the guards in the first place. All he was sure of was that in the seconds before he stepped away, the look on Aeson's face had said he wanted him. That surety, however, seemed to have fled him by the morning.

Eastgate End is not the sort of place a man of Simon Trewinter's birth should frequent, at least not without some kind of legitimate business to take him there, which is something his father has told him on numerous occasions; he knows this, but he has to admit that it's a place to which he's returned with even greater frequency since that night, just to be sure. He returned there for the first time four nights later, to take back the borrowed tunic, bundled up neatly and tied with a silky black ribbon. He went alone and found Aeson in the tavern again, just like he always seemed to be, on his own in the usual corner. He joined him there, though Aeson barely looked up as Simon sat himself down. He completely ignored the tunic that Simon set on the tabletop, somewhere to the right of his big mug of ale.

"You know, I asked about you," Simon told him, leaning on the table. "People say you're the best smith in the city." And that much was true: he'd mentioned Aeson's name to a few of his friends, to his uncle, his father, and found the ones who knew the name had nothing but the highest praise for the exquisite work he did. They said his sunflare work was the best they'd seen, though no one really saw much. His uncle even said he'd asked him about starfire once, when he'd been courting Simon's aunt. The bright gold glow of sunflare's rare, but the power to form starfire's burning silver-white is rarer still; Uncle Kay had laughed and shaken his head when he'd told him Aeson had admitted that he could, but he absolutely wouldn't. Not at any price.

Aeson shrugged. He didn't look up. "People say a lot of things," he replied, between mouthfuls of his stew. "What they say's not always right."

"What if I wanted to commission you?"

He shrugged again. "If I'm the best smith in the city," he said, "I'd say you'd have to wait." But, Simon noted, what he didn't say was _no_. That had to be a good sign, he thought, at least. Even if the full suit of rather simple armour that he asked for would likely cost every penny he'd inherited from his mother's parents years before, and every penny he'd put by himself since then. Perhaps he'd take the broken dagger in part payment. 

He waited. Weeks passed, and during each one of them that passed he'd find him in the tavern and he'd ask again if he'd accept his commission; each week, Aeson said he'd have to wait, but he didn't tell him he should leave and so, one night each week, they've drunk together quietly, or at least Aeson's sat and let him talk. More than once, the mage has joined them; she's Aeson's younger sister, she told him, Aurelia, the local healer. She's told him tales of riding out with companies of soldiers to heal their injuries after battles, since all the lowborn men known not to turn their noses up at what she does, and Simon's happy to acknowledge that she's more than good enough if you just don't mind a bit of pain with it. Aeson's left them alone at the table to go refill his mug, and she's leaned in and told him other things then, too, like how she couldn't save his husband. The last time her big brother etched with starfire, she said, it was for the man he loved.

"You know, he'd tell you to leave if he wanted you to," she told him once, leaning in like it was some sort of secret, but Aeson was there and she didn't even whisper. Simon remembers how his stomach twisted as Aeson glanced at him over the table, scowled, and didn't deny it; that had to be a good sign. When he went for more beer, Simon saw his braid was tied with the black ribbon he'd wrapped around his borrowed tunic all that time ago; ge thought that had to be a good sign, too, or else he'd just misplaced the leather strip he usually wore to tie it off.

He's waited. Weeks have passed, and he's waited what he'd like to think is patiently as Aeson's said his ledger's too damn full to fit him in. Last month, though, he glanced at him over his beer, made a face and then said _fine, let's get it over with_. 

It's been a month. It's been a month full of fittings and visits to Eastgate that his father can't look on so much disapproval, and watching him work with a hammer in his hand and sweat on his brow, not letting his apprentices so much as touch the things he's made as they bustle around him with work of their own. It's been a month of joining him at night, in the tavern, at his table, while Simon's somewhat wayward friends are elsewhere, playing cards. He's joined him almost every night and Aeson hasn't told him not to. And when Simon's caught him looking, sometimes it's been a moment before he'd looked away again. He's never known a man like Aeson the armourer, so seemingly resistant to his charms, who's charmed him in turn with just his few gruff words and brusque manner and the way he looks at him sometimes. But he supposes now, looking at his new armour in the workshop mirror, he understands. He supposes he understands, looking at the armour Aeson's made for him.

Two years ago, he broke his dagger in a fight; the hilt was sunflare-etched, and very fine, and when it glowed in the sunlight it matched his golden hair. The armour he looks at now has that very same pattern; in the late afternoon sun that streams in through the doors that open to the courtyard, the armour glows in long, fine lines that follow Simon's limbs and make him striking, exalted, like a king. And he wonders, as his hear thumps in his chest. He wonders, and so he closes the doors. He shutters the windows and darkens the room to keep the sunlight out. And when he looks at himself in the workshop's huge mirror, he sees it: in the dark, his armour glows silver-white. In the dark, his armour glows with starfire. 

Aeson needn't have done that, he thinks, as his chest tightens. Simon certainly can't afford to pay him for that kind of work. But that's the point, really: Aeson hasn't asked him for a single copper coin in all of this. He's never mentioned pay at all.

"What do I owe you?" Simon asks, as he turns to look at him. It's dark there, but their faces are both lit up bright by the starfire glow. 

Aeson shrugs the way he always does. "Just take it and go," he replies, and that's when Simon finds the surety he lost that night a year ago. 

"Help me take it off first?" he says. "I really can't go wandering around like this." And, after a moment's wary pause, Aeson does so, as if he's sure that it's some kind of trap; it is, of course, because once he's near, Simon pulls him closer still. His gauntleted fingers close on Aeson's thick upper arms. He holds there, tight.

"Do you want me to leave?" he asks. 

"You _should_ leave."

"But do you _want_ me to?"

Aeson looks at him. They both know he could pull back if that were what he wanted, but he doesn't pull back. He clenches his jaw. His mouth twists wryly. "I should have left you to the guards that night," he says, but there's no venom to it. And when Simon leans up to kiss him, he's already sure he won't be pushed away. For once, he's absolutely right.

Simon has slept with men before this. He wouldn't say he lacks experience, or even that he's never felt his cock begin to stiffen when another man's fingers unbuckle the pieces of his armour. Now, though, it's Aeson's fingers that take the armour from him, piece by piece - it's Aeson who strips him, Aeson who made this armour for him with those hands and his own blood, and once he's down to the underclothes, padded tunic and his trousers, Aeson stops but Simon doesn't. He takes those off, too, and not just because he needs to it he's going to put his breeches and doublet back on instead. He takes them off, takes everything off, until he's standing naked in the starfire silver glow of his new armour. He strips and then, naked, he takes Aeson's hands. He presses his lips to his pinpricked fingertips, licks one, smiles, and sees Aeson almost smiles back. As much as he ever smiles, at least. Maybe a little more than that.

"How can I repay you?" Simon asks, as he kisses his palm. "Do you have any ideas this time?" And when Aeson pulls back, somehow Simon understands that it's not quite pulling _away_ ; he takes off his shirt, quickly, awkwardly, his long hair a tousled mess, and nods his head. 

"I can think of a few things," he says, almost nervously but not uncertainly, as he steps back in close to him. He pushes Simon's hair back from his face with his big hands. And when he bends his head to kiss him, of his own fierce volition, Simon's chest feels full right up with such hot joy that he's not sure he can quite believe what's happening. But it's happening. It definitely happens.

He's done a lot of things in Eastgate End that he really ought not to. When Aeson lifts him oh so easily, when Simon wraps his legs around his waist and feels his Aeson's thick cock stiffening against his own, he thinks this might just be the one thing that he won't regret.

And perhaps he won't be marrying for money after all, he thinks. But the sunflare and starfire in his armour says maybe he'll have something else instead.


End file.
